s, has ever been repugnant to us. And our schools,
emanating from such a people, have had a powerful reflex influence in
shaping the people and keeping those fine ideals ever before us. But let
us go back and see whence it came--trace the connection between the
complex, highly influential institution of to-day and the simple
offshoot of the home of primitive times. Just when it was first
instituted, nobody knows; but in essential features it is very ancient.
Long before the beginning of the Christian era, as a supplementary agent
of the home having in charge that one portion of its work, it was a
well-recognized and highly esteemed institution.

I have already called attention to the great changes that have taken
place in the home and in the church as the centuries have passed. The
school likewise has changed, and is to-day as far removed from its
original prototype as either of the others. It has changed because the
home has changed, and in its changes has kept pace with the changing
ideals and added complexities of home life. At the very first, only the
essentials--teacher and boy--were present: no building, the great
out-of-doors furnished the room and the friendly tree the only
protection from sun and storm; no course of study, no book--the teacher
was all in all. But this stage passed and the next, that continued so
long and is more characteristic, followed. Here we find the building and
the book as well as the teacher and the boy. The boy's one task is to
transfer the contents of the book to his own mental storehouse and the
teacher's function to see that the transfer is made. Knowledge was the
main element of the child's preparation, that the home demanded of its
school. And this often but ill-fitted him for the performance of the
duties of life. This period continued for many centuries, down almost to
the present time. But another and a greater followed--a period in which
not merely knowledge was demanded as an outcome of the school's
activities, but something else very different, including that, it is
true, but finer and greater than that--something toward which they are
the contributing agents--a somewhat harmonious development of the entire
life--physical, mental, and moral.

Little by little, as time has passed, the home seems to have been
throwing added burdens upon the school until now it sometimes looks as
if the school is expected to give the entire preparation of the
child--moral, physical, and manual,